BluMihmShaw Day: I Will Collect Local Data For You For Free

Just as the title suggests, I want to, at no charge, solve your local SEO quandaries, by collecting data for you.

I have been feeling especially inspired as of late, specifically thanks to a few gentlemen who are and have been killin’ it. All three have given a tremendous amount to our industry, and continue to do so, day in and day out. More specifically, they have been filling in the blanks for us SEOs – especially the Local SEOs among us. They answer the questions before we question and prove the theories before we theorize. I am talking about the BluMihmShaw (has a nice ring to it actually) trio, better known as, Mike Blumenthal, David Mihm and Darren Shaw.

Collectively, these fellas have made a bit of a data junky out of me, and were the inspiration for my post on citations. As I mentioned in that post, I poured an irrational, silly amount of time into data collection and interpretation, mainly because I didn’t have the know how, nor programmer to develop the software to automate anything. Now I do…and now so do you!

Like anything else, we have ideas, we have questions, and we want to action them. I want to give anyone the opportunity to answer them at no charge. Big or small, if the answer to your question will help us be better SEOs, I am game. Consider this my very small contribution to the community that has given me everything.

Here is an example: I want to figure out, if having more scraped directories on your local listing has any connection to rank. I suspect it does, but I would like to prove it. And so I am running a bot, to scrape occurrences of scraped directories on page 1, 2, 3 and 4 across 70+ niches and 70+ cities. 4900+ queries, and 196,000 listings scraped. If overall, page 1 has more scraped directory occurrences than page 2, and page 2 more than 3 and so on, then I think I have my answer. And so, I would then know that not only do the number of scraped directories play a role, but I would gain further insight into past research regarding what sort of directories…

So, it will work like this…On the first Monday of every month, I, or you perhaps, will have a hypothesis published here (email it to me beforehand at adam.steele at leanmarketing dot ca). Those interested enough will pick it apart, and if there is validity in your study, I will run it. The community will be your judge : ) On the final Thursday of the month, we will publish your results. I proclaim this, BluMihmShaw Day!

That’s all there is to it.

To get the ball rolling, I will post my first bit of research on the first BluMihmShaw Day, at the end of July.

Looking very much forward to everyone’s contributions, and I do hope that together we can give back.

Let me know if you have any questions.

About Adam Steele

A SEO & Local SEO by trade, Adam spends the majority of his time creating new efficiencies through smart processes and the leveraging of technology. He is ruthlessly passionate about building smart, lean businesses, and exploring new, lean, internet marketing techniques. Find him on Twitter @AdamGSteele.